US Year of Independence and Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations"

Today, July 4, is US Independence Day. 244 years ago, with the "Declaration of Independence", it brought a different tone to its political memory. It began to create an attractive political orbit in the world with a different political ideology.

Date of the beginning of independence - 1776 ...

That year was marked by another important event in the history of world economic thought. The work of Adam Smith, who is considered the "father" of economic liberalism, The Wealth of Nations, was published in London in March 1776. With this work, Smith became world-famous and rose to the level of the father of economics. A. Smith's analysis of the social, economic, and political problems raised in the work soon attracted a wide readership, and in 1778, the book was republished.

The end of the US War of Independence and the progress towards the strengthening of capitalist relations in Europe revived interest in the book.

A. Smith began to think about the third edition of his book. Thus, the work was published for the third time in 1784, and Smith did his best to improve the texts in each edition. After that, the book was published twice more in 1786 and 1789.

For some reason, this work, which is also in my library, has been associated with the economic basis of US political independence in my thinking. A state has an enormous volume of economic concepts - 700 pages.

The first book looks at the division of labor, which is a key factor in economic growth. The author then examines the problems of the value of goods and services produced. The book then concludes with an explanation of the theory of distribution, which includes wages, capital gains, and rents.

The second book is devoted to the accumulation of capital necessary for economic growth and the importance of the savings that provide this accumulation.

In the third book, moving away from economic analysis, the author talks about the welfare of different peoples and comments on their views on social development.

The fourth book is about systems of political economy. Here it discusses the history and critique of the political economy. The book itself consists of nine chapters. Eight of them were devoted to the critique of mercantilism, and one chapter was devoted to physiocrats. Here the author first gives a theoretical proof of the necessity of free exchange.

The fifth book is dedicated to public finance. Smith's analysis of public spending remains a major achievement of liberal thought to this day. The first chapter of this book deals with government expenditures, and the third chapter deals with public debt. In this fifth book, A. Smith expresses his views on fundamental economic problems on the basis of concrete materials. For example, his view of taxes is noteworthy. According to Smith, there are four principles of taxation: equality, clarity, ease of payment, and economic collection of taxes.

Smith did not approach the wealth in a primitive way when talking about the wealth of nations. He did not include wealth as a "dead asset" in the subject of economics, he studied man, his economic and moral interests, lifestyle, rules of conduct, and expressed valuable opinions.

There is no other economist in the history of economics whose book has been read so much. According to famous economists, this book by A. Smith has become the "Bible of Liberalism". Smith created his economic system in An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, which is a work of economic research that has played a very important role in the scientific history of economic theory (political economy). Its theoretical heritage still contributes to the development of science, economy, and culture and remains relevant. Although more than two hundred years have passed since the publication of the work, Smith's economic ideas are still used in many countries around the world, as well as in Azerbaijan, which gained independence and established a market economy.

That's why we used the political independence of the United States to talk about economics. At the same time, the United States is not just a political force in the world. It is an economic giant. The United States, which accounts for 5% of the world's population, accounts for 25% of the world economy. The economic meaning of this is that one American consumes as much as four world citizens.

We talked about political independence. We came to economic considerations. For economists, any non-economic topic necessarily has one or more economic aspects...

We must not forget: the guarantee of political independence is economic independence!